Gary,
I forgot to put your name in there...by no means intentional...I truly was blown away by the capability of version 3....best 30 bucks I've spent in sometime....
Mark

i want to import a jpeg sequence with a frame size of 1350x720 into a project which uses standard PAL frame size of 576x720. when i do so, vegas distorts the image of the jpeg sequence so that it fits into 576x720.
is it possible to import the jpeg sequence in such a way that it keeps it's original frame size (1350x720)? later i intend to crop the jpeg sequence in vegas to 576x720.

adi

Open Pan/Crop, Right-click the image, and you will see several different options. The one most used is "Match Output Aspect". You can also manually adjust the settings as needed.

hi ed. i think you misunderstood me. maybe i didn't explain the problem properly.

i know how to crop.

my problem is: when importing the larger frame, vegas autiomatically "squeezes" the large frame (1350x720) to the standard frame size (576x720) and distorts the image by doing so.

i want to import the larger file as is. but can't find how to do it.

You're right - I wasn't thinking of the File - Open - Image Sequence. However, I think it might still work.

Import it, open Pan/Crop, Right-click the image, and choose "Match Output Aspect".

ok. i think i got it. thanks.

oh man.. not happy!!!!!

What is excalibur 3?

Click on the link under my name for more details. There you can find a link on the left to both "Newsletters" and "Excalibur" (as well as Tsunami and Neon). Click on the Excalibur link for purchasing information. Go to the newsletters to read the details about what Excalibur can do.

Short answer: It's a tremendous aid for multi-cam editing but includes many other tools as well.

How does it help multi cam editing?

This will give you a brief overview of the Multi-cam tools (http://www.jetdv.com/vegas/ExcaliburOV.wmv). As I said in the previous message, you can also read about it in the newsletter.

Isn't the pan/crop ruler at the very bottom of the pan/crop window? That little thin line where you mark in and out points with the cursor?

You mean the timeline? If that's what you're referring to, then NO. Vegas 4 had a ruler across the top and down the left side.

Once I have captured footage that has BLUE/GREEN Screen in it, how do I go about using VEGAS for inserting the Background Plate?

Help?

I figured it out :P

I had the Blue Screen track on the wrong LAYER. I t was on botton when it should have been on TOP. (VEGAS looks down through the tracks.)

J

Suddenly, without warning this option is unavailble. The buttons are there but they are MUTED out. What happended? What I am saying is that these buttons are visible but muted and non-'clickable'

Turn off the external monitor.

Gary

I don't have one. It happended as I was working. I use only one 17" Flatscreen (Can't afford EXT MON)

Any other solutions?

The next meeting of the SoCal Vegas Users Group will be:

Wednesday - September 22, 2004
Where: Hollywood
Time: 6:30 - 9:30 p.m.

For more details and rsvp info - click this link to the SCVUG (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/socalvegasusers)

Jay Mitchell
SCVUG Host

Did you try closing and re-opening Vegas and or rebooting your
system? Which version of Vegas are you running? Sounds like
a glitch somewhere.

okies, im in pal land and ive only just figured out why vegas slow mo's are so bad.. (after useing Vegas since its inception many moons ago... even before realtime preview.. )

anyways.. its all got to do with the maths.. for some reason, if u use an even number, or a number off a 5 percentile (ie, 50%, 60% 70% 30% 66% etc... percentile/increment of 5 being 45%, 65%, 75% etc etc, Vegas will just recalculate the needed frames.. which is what it should do, and in Pal land theres not much thinking involved its all even numbers, all its doing is literally halving or dividing the file up into a an even number of frames....

BUT

its jerky as hell.. why?? regardless of what blend method u use.. its still fixated on the main original frame, so the redrawn frames are basically copies of the original without any interpolation due to frame rate.
No interpoloation from what i can see anyways, I might be wrong, as im going thru the slowed footage frame by frame but i see no changes within those newly drawn frames.. jsut a "strecthing" of time between them.. with a static redraw
whether i output to 25p or 50i.. its the same..

BUT (again) heres the doozy...

select an odd number.. 37, 53, 67, 73, etc so long as its not calculatable up to 10, 32, 66, etc etc 25/50/100, and Vegas will have to redraw the whole file.. IE, recalculate WHERE the original frames are, in accordance to the tempo of the actual clip.. so instead of lets say.. a 5 second clip at 50% it wil end up being 10 seconds.. BUT if u have that same 5 second clip, and drop it to 53% its 9.something so its uneven..
So the fields between the originals (which are all now out of wack due to the tempo vs velocity) are actualy smoother as Vegas has actually done some work in redrawing/shuffling the ORIGINAL file frames.. ...

now, i tried setting my project to output to NTSC, and u know what, from pal to ntsc, its perfectly smooth... why, coz ntsc aint 25p or 50i (or a denomination of it.. its 29.97, so its not an actual denomination of 25/50/100 fps, hence vegas redraws the bugger from the core frame (ie REDRAW the original frame to create a workable calculation.. )
I dunno if im flipping over peoples heads here.. but im tryin to think out loud with this... and I know i might sound like a mad professor here, and some people may not agree with me, but thats cool..

I just thought id mention this as its been buggin me.... i mean i once did a slo mo at 10%... looked shite.. dropped it to 9 and 11 and it was perfect..

Supersampling doesnt make any differnce either apart from arranging a multipass render

I might be wrong in my theory about how vegas calculated this, but I'd like to hear other peoples experiences with this... (ie jerky slow mos)

but i thnk iive found the cure for Pal..
I'll be talkin to Sonys dev's about this for an update as i know theyre working on V6 as we speak...

theres alot that can be done and this is one factor which needs to be looked at....

You don't have to be USING an external monitor in order to push the External Monitor button. Make sure the "External Monitor" button is NOT pushed. In Vegas 4 if that button is pushed, the snapshot buttons will be grayed - even if you see the image on the screen!!!

Hi.

Is there an easy or "right" way to go back to the beginning of the timeline and re-cut scenes?
I'm going through a lot of trouble when I group-select and slide events to open up space to re-cut (I need to trim clips making them longer or shorter, or insert clips) because I have several overlapping audio tracks (music/room tone/fx tracks running the length of the scene)
I've read about paste insert, auto ripple, etc. but the problem is I sometimes need to give the video track just a couple more frames but keep the other tracks the way they are.
If I trim out a clip on an earlier point of the timeline, how can I make all other tracks move the same amount of frames so all the rest of the work stays in sync?

Thanks

You're going to have to be VERY careful. Grouping can help you keep things in sync. When you move one item of a group, all other events in the same group should also move. I also use the "Select Events" tool in Tsunami so I can select everything from the cursor to the end of the timeline. This allows adjusting everything after a certain point.

Now depending on exactly what you are doing, sometimes it is feasible to simply render the timeline to a new AVI file and then edit THAT file. Won't work in all circumstances but WILL work in many.

You are correct Edward. Thank you. I don't have an EXT MON and have NEVER had the NEED to use that feature. I guess I just CLICKED it and went into panic mode.

All is good now, thanks again!

It sounds like auto ripple would do the trick making sure the triangle next to the auto-ripple selection is set to all events all tracks. Spread out your timeline so you can see frames and then trim away the excess frames and everything else should fall in place.

Edward,

It appeares that the Hyperlink is not active.

Jay Mitchell

They're working fine. I fixed this one for you. If you want, do an "Edit" on your post to see the proper syntax.

Thanks Edward,

I now understand.

Jay

im taking a course in school and our first project is a "news type" story. the teacher said that she wants the audio channels separate...VO and NAT on separate channels....while i remember some of this from way back in the day when i did some linear editing, i am not sure how i would go about accomplishing this doing a print to tape. i have the GL1/XL1s cameras, and i know they have two audio channels, the first one being 16bit and the second 12 bit i believe...or something along those lines...but I dont know about exporting the footage to the miniDV. honestly, our teacher doesnt seem super savvy (in fact i dont even think she knows) i aksed her about it and all she could muster up was that it was up to us if we wanted to edit nonlinear for the project.

Just to clarify a bit, i know that i can basically have an unlimited amount of audio channels (or maybe there is a limit) in Vegas5, Im only concerned about having two. If I was to export back out to miniDV, is there a way to specify an audio1 and audio2 channels, or will the export combine both of them...i figure that since some news stations are using miniDV this kind of thing would have been run into, since it is news that typically requires these tracks separated.

Does anybody know if it would be possible to write a script that imports another VEG file onto the current time line, and assigns a region to that area so that if you updated the imported VEG the project containing the imported VEG could also be updated easily. Hope that makes sense?

Just trying to think of a way of doing nested timelines within Vegas, or something equivalent. I know I can open another Vegas app and copy and paste, but I was looking for a more automated way of doing this.

Short answer is NO.

Vegas will not capture OR print 4-channel audio. If you need to capture 4-channel, you can use Scenalyzer Live. I know of NO methods for printing 4-channel.

If you need to keep them separate, you may wish to simply pan the voice to the left and the rest to the right. Then you have them separate but on a single stereo channel.

The XL-1/XL-1s/XL-2/GL-1/GL-2 series are some of the FEW cameras that will actually record 4-channel audio. Most others will not. When you record a single stereo channel, it will be recorded in 16 bit. If you drop to 4-channel audio, BOTH stereo tracks will be dropped to 12 bit.

Trey,

Perhaps you are over-thinking this.

Record your mic and nat sound onto separate L/R channels. In your project, duplicate your stereo audio track and make one be left channel only and one be right channel only. Pan the left channel left, the right channel right. NOw you have mic on one channel and nat on the other.

Since Vegas can create 5.1 surround mixes, you COULD create a 5 channell plus LFE soundtrack, but you would have to encode as AC3 audio and deliover on DVD.

Gary

I use the XL-1 4-track audio all the time, though you could do the same in 2-track.

When I use 4-track I keep the onboard mic on the main channels and hook up the wireless to on of the sub channels.

When you take it to the NLE it is a good idea to keep the 12 bit track separated from the 16 bit. When you render, you save the final audio to the 16 bit production track.

This gives you a very nice natural stereo audio and allows you to mix your mono voice track anyway you want.

One caution: You cannot listen easily to all 4-tracks when shooting. You can list to the mains or sub tracks, but when you listen to both together you actually listening to cam's mix of all 4-tracks.

Once you have done this a few times you will rarely have problems.

hmmm...

im thinking that an NLE isnt going to export it back out the way this lady wants it...and its been soooooo long since ive dealt with linear that i cant remember how the audio is handled.....i will need to do some more research....i thought it was similar to the way the GL1/XL1s does the second track at a slightly lower bitrate...so its still L/R audio channels, but a separate channel. I thought maybe someone in here had some more recent linear experience that might be able to point me more in the area i need.

I really dont think my teacher my knows how the audio channels work with miniDV...but she did say i could turn it in on miniDV...so im thinking maybe it wont matter.

I think I'd start by giving it to her with the voice on the left and nat on the right (or the other way around). If she asks, you can explain that they ARE separate.

Here's another possibility but would require going analog: Send the standard video and single stereo channel via firewire to a convertor. Run the convertor to the camera with the audio connected to stereo 1. Send the OTHER stereo channel to the sound card and run that output direct to stereo 2. This would allow you to get a 4-channel tape direct from Vegas.

Hey all. Well I'm finishing up the editing on my first short film that actually had a producer, budget and crew but I've run into some interesting situations. The film is around 18 minutes long and all the while I've been color correcting for web delivery (don't ask why) but now I have a need to prepare the project for DVD delivery to be viewed on TV's. Is there a fast way to remove all the event fx on each track without going to each shot and removing them manually? (every shot has atleast color curves applied) I tried the split screen function on the preview window to just make the prev window bypass all fx and then render out but the render didn't reflect this not to mention I still will need some mild color correction after started back over clean. Any suggestions? What do you guys do?

By the way I'm in Vegas 4e. If it aint broke, don't fix it. I'm staying with 5 for 24p stuff and using my friends dvda2.

Tsunami has a tool that will remove all effects from all selected events. Just click the link under my name for more details.

Nice, that'll save my afternoon. Thanks Edward.

I have a strange problem and a deadline..
I need a good fast solution... FAST!

I use Vegas 5, Camera XL1s, PC system.
PAL!

When I captured a simple pal file from my XL1
it looks okay, but when I put it in a project and try to
render it out it looks really bad. I have some serious
interlace problems.. Anyone have had the same experiance
and know a good solution..

SCREENSHOT:

http://www.atamashi.com/012.jpg

I've noticed this only happens Vegas 5.0
Not in my old 4.0

Anyone have this problem?

It would probably would be more useful if you put up a screenshot of your project and render settings with some info on the original format of the video.

From the JPEG image, I don't see the severe combing/shearing I associate with interlace problems. It looks more like a lot of blur. Off the top of my head, it looks like the video is being converted to progressive somewhere and that might be the problem.

Does the rendered footage look like that when you play it back on an interlaced device?

Yes, it looks like that on a monitor,
I deinterlaced it because it should be easier to see what I meant.

I've fiddled around with the render settings a trillion ways and that doesn't help...

I guess it's back to Vegas 4 to finish this project..

Try comparing settings between Vegas 4 and Vegas 5. Sounds like something, somewhere, is set differently. Check all of the File - Properties, Options - Preferences, and Render As settings to confirm all are the same.

I am having a problem and hope you guys can help me out. I am trying to render a project in NTSC widescreen and when I do it letterboxes the sides, not the top and bottom. Why is this? Thanks.

Mitch

Was the original video shot in 4:3 or widescreen/16:9? If it is in 4:3 you'll need to crop off the top and the bottom to get the widescreen look.

Simon: although Vegas allows scripting you do not have access
to a lot of things to make some really powerfull scripts like you
are suggesting. Let's hope they add more stuff to the scripting
interface shortly (wouldn't get my hopes up though).

2 things..

4:3 footage is just that..it wont change regardless of your project..

so you MUST set the file/cli[ within the timeline to 16:9 AND the Project properties to DV Widescreen to get the full effect

Alternatively u can set vidcap to capture in 16:9 which will do an automatic conversion for u.. which i woudl suggest not to..